OWS Library Solidarity

 Photo Credit: David Shankbone

The Occupy Wall Street Library movement seems to be getting it's day in the sun. Following my last post, I thought I would share some updates here:

Hack Library School has put together a great post with the library student's perspective on the Occupy Wall Street movement and the roles that libraries are playing. Click on over to check it out.

Rachel Maddow + OWS + Libraries = my head exploading with delight! Watch here.

And here are some more links talking about the current state of the grass-roots movement from around the country. Well, mainly NYC and PDX:

http://peopleslibrary.wordpress.com/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/15/occupy-wall-street-library_n_1094941.html

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2011/11/occupy_wall_street_library.php

http://gothamist.com/2011/11/15/occupy_wall_street_library.php 

As these libraries find new homes, I will try and keep updating!

As seen online

There have been lots of fun tidbits floating around the internet the past week. Here are some that have caught my interest:

The first is from the public library in Troy, Michigan. In 1971 construction of the new library was finished, and the children's librarian wrote to hundreds of celebrities, authors and notable public officials asking them to wrote the children of Troy about their new library. She collected 97 of them and they are now up on their website. Some of my favorite's include Issac Asimov, Dr. Seuss, Saul Alinsky, Pearl Bailey, and Vincent Price. Even Ronald Reagan and Pat Nixon wrote some very sweet letters!



Here's an article on how the University of Chicago has built an underground book storage facility that is powered by robots. While this has the potential to cut down on the potential for browsing, I think that this still awesome for an academic library. It creates more space for studying and creates a protected space for valuable materials and archives. Plus, robots are cool.

The Chronicle published another great article looking at innovative academic libraries. This one describes embedded librarians at Johns Hopkins and reworking space to match students needs.

I love working in a medical library and I love learning about new (and free resources). This interactive 3D Human Anatomy Search Engine is pretty rad, and I feel would be an excellent resource for a more general academic or even public library.

I've posted about Snooki before, and I will probably post about her some more. Here is a great article about two academic librarians who use MTV's The Jersey Shore to their advantage.

Demystifying ILL

As an undergrad, I LOVED interlibrary loan. I was doing one of those crazy esoteric senior projects - examining the historical development of agriculture technology and the bifurcation of nature and society (say that 10 times fast). While we had an awesome library, it didn't have most of what I needed to write this paper. Interlibrary loan saved the day. Putting in a request one day and having it show up in either my email inbox or campus mailbox was amazing. If I knew then that I would be working in an interlibrary loan office a few years later, I would have been much more appreciative.

I now realize that interlibrary loan is a lot of work. And I don't think that library users are aware of this. I know I didn't before I worked in a library. So I posted this thought on twitter:

I hope patrons realize how much work goes into getting their articles through ILL...

..and I got this response:

@JenniferMReads I'm a librarian & don't know exactly what goes into getting an article via ILL! Blog post idea??!!

Well, JenniferMReads, here it is. I lift the veil of Inter-Library Loan:

First, a note. My responsibility right now is just to process incoming lending requests, providing patrons from other libraries with materials from our collection. Also, we're a relatively large medical academic library, so we get a lot of lending requests. That said, here is a *brief* description of how this process goes down:

- Request comes in through one of three avenues: illiad, docline or document delivery

- I process the request, locating where it might be in the library (physical location or electronic database) and what format the requesting library would like it in (physical book/journal or tiff or pdf)

- Locate the item, pulling it from the stacks or navigating databases and publishers websites

- Scan the item and save it in the preferred format or download the article

- Send the item: package and address the book or journal or make sure that the proper electronic format gets sent through the appropriate electronic pathways (through Ariel or Odyssey software or save the pdf on a server and email the link to the library).

- Repeat again, and again. and again. and again.

The craziest part about ILL is that requests never. stop. coming. in. It's like running up a giant sand dune. Each step takes you closer to the top, but you are constantly sliding backwards. If you ever stop, you'll find yourself back at the bottom.

And these are just requests from other libraries, let alone placing a request for material from another library for our patrons.

While this post might sound "woe is me," I love working in inter-library loan. It provides many hands on learning opportunities. I am constantly thinking of the user, remembering what it was like to receive requested articles. I also remember what it was like to receive an article that was blurry, cut off, hard to read or had lots of black areas from poor scanning/copying that wasted toner when printed off. So I take care to ensure that my scans are readable and printable. I know patrons don't stop to think about the quality of their article - unless the quality is poor. So my goal is to make sure that patrons don't don't how awesome there scans and copies are.

I'm also getting some great experience navigating through databases and publisher websites. In the few weeks that I have worked in the ILL office, I have probably looked up more journal articles than in the entirety of my post-secondary academic career.

And of course I spend the time with some great individuals who create a pretty awesome work environment.

ILL is an essential part to the library system, creating additional avenues for patrons to access information they need. I hope this description helps clear up some of how those materials are brought in. And if you ever receive a journal article from a medical library in the Pacific Northwest, know that it was sent with a little bit of love!

#libchat

Due to a cold that is making its way around the library and coworkers on spring break, I had the privilege of six uninterrupted hours at the circulation desk..

...It actually wasn't that bad. I was able to get a lot of school work done, and I had an hour and a half dedicated to the second weekly libchat on twitter, which helped the time fly by.

Started by Natalie Binder (@nataliebinder), wh0 offers an excellent explanation on her blog, Libchat is like a live mini-discussion with people who are interested in libraries and information management. But it is a discussion where location and geography doesn't matter.

It works like this like this: Folks tweet their questions to Natalie ahead of time. During the chat, every 20 minutes or so she shares a question. The rest is a pretty organic experience - like any other normal conversation -with people from all over sharing their answers, ideas and insights. And it's pretty fascinating to watch what happens.

However, it certainly isn't a perfect medium for having a conversation. What is most frustrating is the fact that it is twitter, and you only have 140 characters. So it is a little awkward and it can be hard to offer an answer when there are some pretty big questions raised. For Example:


Really? Where to begin...

Thankfully there were some great answers, such as @ValentineLuLu's:

And @overgeeked's:

Which leads us to the benefits of libchat. It was great to see all of the different topics raised in such a short amount of time. The quickness of the format got your mind churning about all of the different issues that libraries are having to deal with. It was also awesome having so many library students in attendance: we're already thinking about a multitude of issues from our different classes, libchat was an additional exercise to keep those ideas freshly flowing.

Along with the different ideas, it was great to see some themes emerge as well. Natalie asked:



Participants answer's revolved around user centered missions such as customer service and information access. Questions like this helped support my belief that no matter how much the industry evolves, our missions and core values will prevail. After all, Ranganathan developed the five laws of library science in the middle of the 20th century, and they are still relevant today.

I'm pretty excited about the potential libchat holds. It is an amazing way for the library community to connect, no matter where members are located. And it is going be to a great way for us to discuss the current issues and support each other as we weather the changes that keep us on our toes (was it a coincidence that the Harper Collins debate popped up in both this week and last week's chat? Of course not).

I really hope that these chats continue, they certainly seem to be picking up steam. Right now they are scheduled for Wednesday evenings at 8pm eastern time (5pm here on the west coast), and I hope to see you at the next one...

The sky is falling

Alright, after last week's post about keeping things brief, I'm going to eat my words and go off on a bit of a rant.

Sometimes I wonder if librarians are their own worst enemy. There, I said it.

The above image - from PostSecret, a collaborative art project where total strangers mail in post cards with their secrets on them - illustrates beautifully where I am coming from.

We get it - the economy sucks and the sucky economy is screwing over libraries left and right. We've talked about this for ages now. Can we please move on?

It's really frustrating as a library student to be hearing the same thing over and over again: libraries aren't hiring, librarians aren't retiring, budgets are getting cut, folks are getting laid off, branches are closing, rah rah rah rah rah....

It seems like most librarians, library workers and fellow students I come across - both in person and (mostly) online - are broken records, stuck in the "woe is us" mentality.

I - the naive library student - say enough is enough! We've gone through the cathartic bellyaching phase and now is the roll-up-our-sleeves and work harder phase. It doesn't sound like fun, but I think it's what we've got to do.

Personally, I am a little nervous about what my job prospects will be like when I graduate in a year, but I've been hustling, and I'm willing to hustle a little more when school is over. I'll do what it takes to get a personally satisfying job. I'm well aware that I am going to leave Portland - an amazing city that has been my home for four years now. There is a strong reality that I'll have to live in a much less glamorous part of the county. Maybe even Kansas.

Except for who we vote for and what we choose to do with our money, we have very little control over the state of the economy. So let's try and focus on what we do have control over: ourselves. What can we do to stop library closings? Advocate, advocate, advocate. One of the things that most attracted me to the idea of becoming a librarian/information professional was the activism that seemed to go hand in hand with the position. Librarians fight for the right of the patron, for the privacy of the patron, for the access of the patron. Well - now is the time to fight for ourselves!

Here is a great link to librarian.net, with a list of single-link library advocacy sites.

And here is link to contact your elected representatives to ensure that libraries get in on the Jobs for Main Street Act.

What else can we do? Accept change. I feel like a lot of the hand wringing that librarians are doing is not only over the state of the economy, but also the fact that libraries are quickly changing. Well - if we want to ensure that we are meeting the needs of our communities, we are going to have to change. The mission of a library - from my prospective - is to connect an individual with information. If the format of the information is changing, than the format of the library will change too.

I don't intend to sound insensitive to the very real fears people are experiencing out there - although I am sure that I am coming off that way. For those who have been laid off or lost jobs - I'm sorry. Bad things happen to really really good people. I wish you the best and hope you are quickly on your feet.

I know I am in a very lucky position - I'm a young student without a family, mortgage, car, pets. I'm highly mobile and I have grown up using the technology that libraries now employ. But these are my skills and attributes that I have to take advantage of. This is something that we all should do, especially in this day and age of volatility, look at what we bring to the table and how to use those skills to our advantage.

I write all of this after attending a quarterly staff meeting at the library where I work - and while it was pretty mundane, it was also pretty exciting as well. The library where I work - before I started working here nine months ago - has gone through a lot of the same troubles that most libraries have gonethrough. Between lay offs, retirements and hiring freezes the staff here is half to a third of what it was before this great recession.

Yet here we are today still working - albeit a bit harder. Not only are we surviving, but we are thriving. The amazing library staff is working on building the resources for a mobile library, we are opening up a 24 hour study space for the students, we are outreaching to the different academic departments and schools within the university and applying for competitive grants to secure our funding into the future. And with the wage/hire freeze lifted - there is hope for more job opportunities.

What I guess it all boils down to - for me (this is my blog so I'm allowed a bit of selfishness) - is that I am the future and this is my reality. In a way, I am glad to have entered library school in 2009 - it means that I am a blank slate. I don't know what it was like when budgets were flush and things were easier. I am cutting my teeth when the industry is facing some of it's worst challenges than ever before. And I'm going to be a better librarian for it.

Let me know what you think. Am I too harsh? Too idealistic? Too Unrealistic? I would love to read your thoughts...

Think of the user.....

A few weeks into my second semester as a library student, I've been noticing a common phrase all of my instructors have been using.

"Think of the user."

When organizing information, we need to think of who wants to access it and what is the easiest way for them to find it. When manning the reference desk, we need to ascertain what the user is looking for and how are they are going to use it. Not to pass judgment, but to focus our search of the information to materials that will be most useful.

Not only does the expression come up in lectures and discussions, but also in assignments. We're developing a reference collection and we need to consider who is going to use it. What are their needs? What is their previous experience with similar material? Will this collection be useful?

We are developing annotated bibliographies on various subjects pertaining to the organization of information, and we need to think of who our audience is and what are the most pertinent resources we can highlight.

A successful and efficient library will always place its patron's needs at the center of its efforts.

In thinking about the importance of focusing on the user, I try and take the concept out of the realm of librarian. What if everyone, in any profession, constantly reminded themselves to "consider the user?"

What if the heads of big bankers asked themselves if high-risk loans where going to fully benefit their customers? Or if paying out huge bonuses to it's upper management would help out those whose housing were being foreclosed? Or politicians, when engaged in health-care reform debates, truly had their constituents at heart, rather than just promoting the advancement of their political party?

Consider this specific example:Just today, the Lancet reported that it was removing one of the most controversial studies it has published in recent years: the study that linked vaccinations to autism. Their reasoning? It turns out that the author was receiving large sums of money from a lawyer who was going after companies that produced the vaccinations.

While this certainly won't remove the controversy surrounding childhood vaccinations (I personally studied Thimerosal a little too much in college to fully take one side of the debate or the other), it certainly calls into question the intent of the author, Dr. Andrew Wakefield. Was he considering the user? Was he thinking about the outcome of this study and the affect it could have on the health of millions and millions of children. It certainly doesn't seem like he was.

After mulling over these thoughts, I'm going to try and make a personal pledge. As I go through my daily life, not only as a future librarian but as an active member of society, I'm going to try and always think about how my actions and interaction are going to affect others. I'm going to try and remember to ask myself, am I being helpful? Granted, I'll probably never be publishing major international scientific reports or run a bank, but even a little bit of helpfulness can go a long way....